It Was 60 Years Ago Today
Very little of a negative nature was ever expressed about Clifford Brown. The trumpeter was gifted with a beautiful tone, inventive melodic skills, and profound rhythmic mastery, and he was a man of sterling character. As a player, Brownie always swung, and his solos and obbligatos were unfailingly compelling. There is, however, at least one instance of a critical comment being made about the Wilmington, Delaware native. In his review of the Art Blakey Quintet’s fabled performance at Birdland in February 1954, Nat Hentoff wrote, “[Brown] has one main trouble. He often plays too many notes. Clifford will be a great trumpet player, not just a very good one, when he finds out the expressive value of economy.”
I thought of that this morning when listening to the recording that Brownie appeared on with Sarah Vaughan 60 years ago today. Herbie Mann was also on the date, and the flutist credited Brownie as a major influence, beginning with something that suggests the trumpeter had become a model of economy only ten months after Hentoff’s critique. “Brownie knew how to use silence,” Mann told Clifford’s biographer, Nick Catalano. He also noted another aspect of Brownie’s playing that speaks to “expressive value.” Mann said, “I began to develop my melodic style from trumpeters, and Brownie became the conduit for this style.” He said that Steve Allen later complimented him on what he acknowledges was Brownie’s original example. “You’re not just playing chords,” Allen said. “The reason why I love what you’re doing is because you’re playing melodies.” Mann felt the same principle was a guiding force in Brownie’s work with Max Roach. “They were trying to figure out a way to get closer to the people.”
Mann found himself sharing the front line with Brownie and the Vice-Pres, tenor saxophonist Paul Quinichette, on December 16, 1954 when the trio of horns was deployed for the recording with Sarah Vaughan and her trio of Jimmy Jones, Joe Benjamin, and Roy Haynes. Mann and Sam Most had become first call flutists in the New York studios and there they often encountered Quincy Jones; Q got Herbie on Sarah’s date. Mann said the session was “very loose,” and a “defining moment” for him. “Playing alongside Brownie was like being on a basketball court with Michael Jordan.”
Vaughan was at the height of her early fame in 1954. She’d scored big hits for Mercury, but she kept a more informal sideline going on the label’s jazz imprint EmArcy, which was Brown and Roach’s label too. The session consisted of nine standards, all played at an extended length of four to six minutes that allowed for solos by the horns. Ernie Wilkins conducted the ensemble and is credited as arranger, but Mann says the singer played a substantial role in assigning solos and “notes.” Brownie was featured on every track, which may have been at Vaughan’s
behest. She’d first heard him in 1952 when he was with Chris Powell’s Blue Flames on a bill they shared at Cafe Society, and she told Powell, “I have to have Clifford for a record date.” One of the session’s delights is the extensive use that Brownie makes of mutes; he played mostly open horn with Blakey and Max. Another is the sublime work of Quinichette, whose accompaniments emulate his hero Lester Young’s playing with Billie Holiday.
The EmArcy release was originally titled, Sarah Vaughan, but on subsequent reissues, it’s fittingly named Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown. Vaughan said it was her personal favorite, and of her vast recorded output, it’s my Desert Island choice too. The Penguin Guide includes it in its select Core Collection, and notes, “The session with Clifford Brown was a glorious occasion, and the kind of date that occurred far too infrequently during the rest of Sarah’s career. A blue-chip band on a slow-burning set of standards that Vaughan lingers over and details with all the finesse of her early-mature voice…In the past we have wondered if the many slow tempos were perhaps too many, but in this superb new remastering it is very difficult to find any flaw in what should be recognized as one of the great jazz vocal records. We are upgrading it to crown status as a result.”
Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown earned a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff included it in his book, The 100 Most Important Jazz Recordings.
In his comprehensive and authoritatuve study, Jazz Singing, Will Friedwald writes, “Sarah Vaughhan did her best when the record wasn’t a literate, well-orgnized conception at all but an off-the-cuff outing with a small group, preferably a trio, as on Swingin’ Easy, or with one or t wo great jazz horns, like Clifford Brown and Paul Quinichette on Sarah Vaughan…In the days when it was possible for her to sell a million records, such directly jazz-oriented projects had to take second fiddle to her more commercial singles and LP’s, but in the Seventies such loose, small-group affairs became the norm when Vaughan made six generally stunning discs for Norman Granz’s Pablo label.”
Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown is the Tuesday album feature in tonight’s Jazz à la Mode.